Making the most of industrial applications
14 May 2018
In the context of rising costs, an ageing workforce, evolving technology and the changes to the Ecodesign Directive, Andy Graham, Wonderware Product Manager at SolutionsPT, looks at the changes businesses need to make to their platforms to enable them to extract real value from their industrial applications.
HMI SCADA software has transformed the efficiency of our operators and processes, creating immersive user experiences. It is now simple to unite geographically disparate sites and deliver real insight from vast datasets. However, change is now happening so quickly that the lifecycle of industrial applications has become the very thing limiting operational efficiency.
You don’t need to look far to see that the UK’s manufacturing industry is changing. With the advent of Industry 4.0, the emergence of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and the need for all modern plants to be fully digitised in order to connect with their multiple data points, today’s manufacturers face more operational challenges than ever. Furthermore, with energy costs continuing to increase, operating a manufacturing plant is now also more expensive than ever.
However, one area where manufacturers can make savings is on their energy expenditure. Although becoming energy efficient represents a huge challenge for manufacturers, as it requires them to combine both regulatory and commercial considerations, it has become so important that effective energy management is now a business necessity to which unlocking the hidden value of big data holds the key.
Since the Ecodesign Directive came into effect on 1st January 2018, this issue has become even more pressing. The Ecodesign Directive governs all energy-related products, including chillers and industrial coolers, and has imposed strict new Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for industrial process cooling systems since the start of the year. The new benchmark for an industrial process chiller will be its Seasonal Energy Performance Ratios (SEPR). Minimum SEPRs will be calculated as the ratio between the annual refrigeration demand and its annual electricity consumption.
With process cooling and refrigeration systems currently accounting for approximately 60 percent of a plant’s total life cycle cost, inefficient chillers can contribute to hugely inflated utility bills which will ultimately impact on the company’s bottom line.
Energy consumption in manufacturing facilities can be reduced by using the latest automated technologies and through improved monitoring and control of energy used in infrastructure. For many, the prospect of a complete infrastructure upgrade is unrealistic but, with the right platform, businesses can develop a stronger, more insightful understanding of their operations, and become able to visualise their energy use immediately, enabling them to quickly identify any inefficiencies.
Similarly, digitisation advancements within industrial automation are enabling the transfer and collection of greater volumes of operational data across the plant floor, supporting manufacturers in monitoring the likes of energy expenditure and efficiency levels. However, not all manufacturing businesses are able to take advantage of this potential insight - in fact, many plants are finding themselves restricted by the lifecycle of their existing industrial applications.
Realistically, connecting plant assets with control systems and business systems requires highly specialised personnel resources, as well as precious development time. Furthermore, application development, deployment and re-engineering significantly raise project costs across the lifecycle of industrial applications and, with IIoT-enabled applications also requiring specialised scripting and customisation, it’s actually not quite as simple as saying ‘Let’s digitise.’
There are solutions out there and the latest platforms, such as Wonderware’s System Platform 2017, are capable of effectively bridging the gap between the OT and IT worlds. Wonderware System Platform 2017 helps companies take full advantage of increased IIoT connectedness and digitisation, within a centralised, multi-user collaboration framework.
For engineers, System Platform’s powerful drag and drop application building and remote deployment capabilities will deliver impressive engineering efficiency, whilst operations managers can achieve contextualised situational awareness by delivering out-of-the-box content and process visualisation standards that greatly simplify the task of achieving the optimal situational awareness of industrial processes. Crucially, what manufacturers need is a platform that works with any device, providing access to real-time management dashboards, allowing them to monitor energy consumption in the context of each site, line and operator.
The easy availability and analysis of data can transform the way a company works and enable manufacturers to better understand their plant’s energy usage, and predict and manage performance and expenditure. With so much of this data already available and locked in process data historians, accessing it is simply about starting with the right foundation.
Contact Details and Archive...